On 12/9/2013 1:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 09 Dec 2013, at 05:52, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/8/2013 1:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
No, it's a simple matter of using different words for different things and not
muddling the distinction. The Abrahamic religions make a positive virtue of faith:
"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of
his Reason."
--- Martin Luther
Every machine who want to be simply correct with herself cannot not tear her eyes out
of his Reason, or if you prefer, cannot avoid discovering the gap between Truth and Proof.
Now, of course, I can recognize that Luther sentence can also be exploited by
"politics", and that is the whole weakness of theology. But that is a reason to be
even more rigorous in that field, not less.
A good course in non confessional theology could list the drawback of the theological
faith, when blind.
“When we come to believe, we have no desire to believe anything else, for we begin
by believing that there is nothing else which we have to believe…. I warn people
not to seek for anything beyond what they came to believe, for that was all they
needed to seek for. In the last resort, however, it is better for you to remain
ignorant, for fear that you come to know what you should not know…. Let curiosity
give place to faith, and glory to salvation. Let them at least be no hindrance, or
let them keep quiet. To know nothing against the Rule [of faith] is to know
everything.” --- Tertullian
Same remark, but here, the "politics" idea seems prevalent (and is bad). the idea to
separate science from theology is responsible for such use of "bad faith".
Today, after listening to the machines, we would say the contrary. Like "if you have
faith, never drop reason, as reason can only be extended by faith, and never been
contradicted. If you feel a contradiction, ask yourself if you have not been abuse by
some politics who want to manipulate you."
"Those who object to the punishment of heresy are like dogs
and swine,"
--- John Calvin
Authoritative argument, I guess.
You identify faith with "blind faith". But "blind faith" is something which exist
because for centuries you were burn alive if you did not have the "blind faith".
Events that were justified and approved by theologians.
Rational Theologians have been persecuted, exiled, banished from science and
academies. That is why there are "pseudo-theologians" approving authoritative violent
method of convicting people. That would stop when we will decide to come back on a bit
of seriousness on the issue. That cannot be done in one day, but listening to the
machine will help. They have very few prejudice, and can hardly be said to defend a
religion, except for their belief in classical logic, but nome forbid to also
listening to intuitionist machine if they want. (That does not make much sense in
Platonism, though, and is equivalent with listening only to the first person (SAGrz)
associated to the machine, and not to the "scientist" (G) associated to the machine).
Blind faith is a remnant of terrorist politics, like the religion has become on some
ground.
No it's a remnant of religion - which inspires and justifies terrorist politics.
A remnant of pseudo-religion, due to the fact that we are not yet free to think in
that aera. It is forbidden by atheists and fundamentalist alike.
But you evade the point that these three quotes are by theologians who helped found
religions, Catholocism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism, that are still believed by billions
of people. You are calling these "psuedo-religions", which shows how far your have
distorted common usage.
They are pseudo-religion according to their own standard. They give a name to what is
not nameable, and they invoke it for terrestrial normative purposes. it is not religion,
it is politics.
Originally magic, science, religion were all the same thing - an attempt to understand and
control the world. Suppose I call this ur-science. Then religion is what we call
ur-science that was split off to serve politics, to organize people and create community
feelings and to lead larger groups than tribal families. I don't say that is theology.
Magic (e.g. alchemy) and science stayed together much longer until eventually modern
science developed based on empirical testing of theories. Magic (prayer healing,
revelations, ESP...) now exists in a kind of no-man's land between religion and science.
Theology is religion's reaction to the success of science and mathematics. It is
apologetics trying to explain why one should not apply the standards of knowledge so
successful in other fields to religion - and that includes the pseudo-religions formed
around economic and political theories (Marxism, libertarianism,...).
My definition of "religion" should suit everybody, believer and disbeliever
(and agnostic).
I don't think it suits those billions of people who belong the major world religions. You
definition has nothing to do with worship, sexual practice, sacrifice, ritual, community,...
The theology of the machine M is the truth about machine M. (Or the set of all
arithmetical true propositions with M as a parameter). The science of the machine M is
the same with provable at the place of true. This helps to distinguish religion from
science, from the machine points of view, and to discuss how much the machine can prove
and discover sharable propositions in his or another machine's theology.
Computer science explains well why "truth" can play the role of a sort of spiritual
transcendental entity for the machine, and indeed, how machine get mystical about it,
and *can* have incommunicable experience about it. In that setting, just being conscious
is already usefully seen as a mystical state, even if only on degree 0. It is a gate
toward many different possible states of consciousness. Some of them might have deep
relation with truth, entailing possible sort of personal trust toward truth, akin to a
sort of (non blind at all, given the experience) faith.
Or maybe they have no relation to "truth". How to tell? I know. We'll use
science!
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
